Kenya's tenth Vice-president, Kalonzo Musyoka and his former partner under the Orange Democratic Movement Kenya (ODM-Kenya) party Raila Odinga, have had a shaky relationship over the years.
It has been a union riddled with suspicion as the two fought tooth and nail to make a positive mark in Kenya's political arena.
"My relationship with Raila Odinga has been interesting and intriguing, full of drama and controversy. It is a relationship that has left me bruised and smeared in political mud," Kalonzo explains in his 2016 autobiography, Against all Odds.
One particular event on August 23, 2003, forever changed the relationship between the two leaders, this was the death of former VP, Kijana Wamalwa.
According to the infamous Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between former president Mwai Kibaki's NAK party and Kalonzo & Raila's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in 2002, the late Wamalwa and Kalonzo were to occupy the two VP slots that would be created while Raila would be appointed as the Prime Minister, after the position was created.
However, once Kibaki won, he reneged on the deal, going on to oust Raila and Kalonzo from his inner circle.
Wamalwa's untimely death offered Kibaki the chance to make good on the initial agreement to appoint Kalonzo as his second in command, but Raila's action or inaction cost the Ukambani stalwart greatly as he explained in his book.
"The letter and the spirit of the MoU were very clear that I would be appointed Vice President. I expected that in my absence, Raila would be my advocate just in case Kibaki showed signs of reneging on the agreement. This he was unable to do. Moody Awori was given the job," reads an excerpt from his book.
Kalonzo and Raila's strained union never really recovered after that, with Kalonzo opting to go his separate way taking his ODM Kenya party name, leaving Raila who then formed the ODM party that he would need to retrieve from Mugambi Manyara who had opportunistically registered it under his name.
This happened following what was the final nail in their coffin back in 2007 when Raila opted to run against Kalonzo in the general elections eventually losing to Mwai Kibaki in an acrimonious election that almost burned Kenya to the ground.
Following the post-election chaos that claimed thousands of lives and displacing hundreds of thousands, the opposition and President Kibaki signed the national accord on February 28, 2008, that spelt out a power-sharing agreement with Raila becoming Prime Minister and Kalonzo vice president.
The two would later team up under the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (Cord) in the run-up to the 2013 general election and later under National Super Alliance (Nasa) for the 2017 election with more partners losing both contested elections to President Uhuru Kenyatta.
After the March 9, 2018 handshake between President Uhuru Kenyatta and the former premier, the Nasa coalition began to crumble with Kalonzo accusing Raila of sidelining other coalition partners even with a backdrop of a chaotic mock swearing-in ceremony that only Odinga attended of the five Nasa principals.
